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John Hall loves collaboration. When the former winemaker founded Forty Creek Whisky in 1992 — Ontario’s first new whisky distillery since 1939 — he wanted to bring blended Canadian whisky to a new level of taste and appreciation.

Earlier this year, Hall’s whiskies won five gold medals at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

At a Forty Creek tasting at the Toronto Temperance Society on College St., Hall offered attendees three separate glasses filled with barrel-aged rye, corn and barley, the three noble grains used in his Barrel Select, Copper Pot Reserve and Confederation Oak Reserve whiskies. Sipped on its own, the rye was a resounding success, but Hall resisted demands for an all-rye release.

“If you painted a canvas and the only colour you had was blue, it wouldn’t be an interesting painting,” he says.

Because the art of blending is not only a long-standing tradition but a key element to whisky-making, Hall is surprised by the resistance the collaborative term sometimes meets. “Blending is not a bad word, but a lot of people think so. They’re missing out.”

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Dave Mitton of the Harbord Room doesn’t think whisky-lovers frown on blended whiskies like Canadian Club and Wiser’s but perhaps they are too familiar with them. “They have always been available to us generally at a lower price than all these corn and rye whiskies people are getting excited about coming up from the U.S.”

Sales of American whisky at the LCBO were up 10.3 per cent for 2012-2013. Forty Creek, sensing rye will soon replace bourbon as Ontario’s brown spirit of choice, has met the market’s demand halfway. Heart of Gold, available in limited supply at the LCBO this month, is Hall’s answer to the rye-craving market, but he hasn’t given in completely.

Heart of Gold isn’t an all-rye whisky like Alberta Premium. Hall sees no fun in that.

“Rye is very one-dimensional and I prefer more balance in the whisky,” he says.

Rye grain contains many spicy and fruity notes, but also features floral aromas and flavours that are usually lost during fermentation and distillation.

The Windsor, Ont. native — who was inspired to become a whisky-maker by years of walking past the Hiram Walker distillery on his way to school — circumvented that loss in quality by fermenting the grain with wine yeast instead of the commonly used distiller’s yeast. The aromas and flavours stuck.

After aging the whisky for nine years in a light-toasted white oak barrel, Hall thought the results needed balance. “I used some aged corn whiskies to bring out a little creaminess and added a little bit of barley for nuttiness.”

The rye is the star of the show, he says, but its other collaborators prop it up.

The Canadian whisky industry is far from the only market where the art of blending matters. Gordon Motion, the master blender at The Famous Grouse, the top-selling blended Scotch whisky in the U.K., evokes a similar metaphor: “A single-malt whisky is like an instrument playing a solo. You might not like that instrument, but stick it into an orchestra and you will love that balance.”

The Famous Grouse has taken the metaphor a step further, launching The Famous Collaboration, a marketing campaign aimed at promoting cross-platform art and media.

Earlier this month, a copper sculpture was unveiled in London while Motion, tending the bar, challenged guests to make their own blends using The Famous Grouse’s various flavours: vanilla, peat, spice, lavender, citrus and grain spirit.

Achieving balance can be a balancing act. “You can have something that’s just a bit too strong,” says Motion.

In 2007, the company released The Black Grouse: a peated, smoky version of The Famous Grouse. “We went through three or four different styles of peated whiskies and some of them were just a bit too ashy.”

The biggest challenge, Motion contends, is keeping up with demand. “Our production program has challenging time and volume scales. So much time is spent in development. Then we have to order in casks from various locations.”

The LCBO will soon stock The Famous Grouse’s new 16-year-old blended whisky, which Motion says will help redefine the category and keep them closer in line with the heavily sought single-malts.

But you can’t blend The Famous Grouse without those single-malts: in this case, Highland Park and The Macallan.

“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” says Hall, a whisky philosopher if there ever was one.

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